It looks like Abrams and company are taking the same route that they did with Cloverfield and filming under different names to throw people off, but of course that isn't going to stop us from figuring it out. It appears as though filming will start in September in Weirton, West Virginia. It also appears that the casting call that was sent out before that was thought to be Super 8, in fact is. Some of the people that live in Weirton have received letters from the production company stating that a movie called "Darlings" will begin filming on the main street of the town and last 2 to 3 months and the plot revolves around a 14 year old boy and is set in a steel town in 1979.
But that's not all, according to WOWK there is another Paramount production shooting under the title "Wickham" about a group of teenagers who spend a summer together and their struggles with growing older. The press release indicates that the movie is PG-13 and will be filming in Weirton, West Virginia in September, which obviously leads to speculation about this also being another fake title for the Super 8 filming. And according to Comingsoon.net, Athena Wickman is the name of a long standing creative executive over at Bad Robot, JJ Abrams production company.
And lastly there appears to have been an extras casting call placed in the local Weirton news paper looking for middle/high school kids, police, soldier, EMT and townspeople. This casting call, which was placed under the name Wickham, notes that the movie revolves around a train crash that brings a town together. So with all this information that has been gathered it would be a pretty good assumption that Super 8 will be filming in Weirton, West Virginia next month. So if you live in that area and can get a few spy pics, send em over.
Thanks to Stacey and Robert for tipping me off to this info.
I wish they would filim in Scotland where I live!! I wish a big movie production happened in my town 🙁
dude, i live in Croatia. nothing bigger ever gets filmed here 🙁
when was Evelyn Minker born?
New post on HLM…
This is starting to sound like a teenage drama filled Encounter of the 3rd Kind…
😉
NO ONE IS ANSWERING ME!
Wouldn’t that mean no one knows the answer to your question? Patience is in fact a virtue.
…Wow, they’re really not being subtle at all with this, huh? I mean, we know that Super 8 is taking place around West Virginia, and they’re not only sending out casting calls there (not unusual for one movie, but for 2? and at the same time?) but… well, I kind of just said it, but 2 movies both taking place in the same town, and filming starting at the same time? I’m glad somebody caught this, because if we had missed it, we should all have been ashamed.
This makes me think that this movie will focus on Josh’s mom and maybe his dad. Josh probably is going to figure out what happened in 1979 and someone is trying to tell him the truth and what not. Also looking back at the script of “Darlings” it might make sense about the truck crash, then again in the trailer it seems like noone would survive that…. but just an idea. But, I think that Josh Minker is sadly a major minor character( If that makes sense) and that , again, it would focus on his mom and possibly dad’s experience in 1979.
Well, to my experience, characters in viral campaigns usually aren’t so big in the final projects. I could be wrong though, but stuff like tagruato and slusho, which were major elements of Cloverfield’s ARG(correct me if I’m wrong), barely appeared in the actual movie. Same with the Halo ARG’s, save for the Cortana Letters.
first casting call already held, another casting call in the next week or two: http://www.weirtondailytimes.com/page/content.detail/id/548172/First-casting-call-held.html?nav=5006
Lol @ the newspaper article, and how they only mention it as “The Paramount Movie.”
I know this sounds crazy, but do you guys think the movie will be shot in these locations all at the same time? Cause this is J.J. Abrams we’re talking about, so he’s an unpredictable man. Or can this film be about kids who makes homemade movies and are struggling with growing up and they capture the train crash which brings the whole town together?? I don’t know, just a guess…
Soldiers? Police? Yep, defintely sounds like Cloverfield.
Yeah, soldiers and police only exist to fight 300ft creatures and naughty aliens.
lol
I’m with you on this one. I don’t know if anyone has made the connection or not but on Josh’s blog he talks about his obession with the coelacanth and his desire to find one and save it. In Cloverfield Hud talks about how the “thing” may be from the ocean. His reasoning? The ocean is huge, so huge that off the coast of Madigascar they found a fish that they thought was extinct so who knows whats out there. That fish was the coelancanth. If we learned anything from Cloverfields early viral marketing its that its the subtle hints that mean something, not the big picture.
Thankfully I live 10 minutes from Weirton 😀 casting call is later today, wish me luck.
Good luck! And report back with any interesting information you can get your hands on!
900 people signed up so far for the extras. Friend and I went, was neat lol. but ill stick to updating if I happen to get picked. They’re calling for 12 hour days, weekly. A lot of night filming also so it’d just be awesome if I got a phonecall 😀
Haha, they didn’t try to cover that up at all.
I am interested though, if anyone lives in West Virginia, please check it out. They mentioned a train crash and we all know that that is what we saw in the trailer. M
Actually my daughter just went for a casting call
My daughter (17 y.o.) went to the casting call, too. When I was researching the movie “Darlings” online, I stumbled across this and some other sites that were wondering if this movie being filmed here in Weirton was actually Super 8, so I watched the trailer.
All I can say is if they’re looking for a town that still looks easily like it’s 1979, they’ve picked the right area. And it’s a steel mill town with tons of old, but still used railroad tracks. (Again…they are old and look it).
I’m from Weirton. My wife has been invited to a casting call that I have not seen published elsewhere. I might go along just in case they need a big Steelworker guy. I work in IT, but my father is retired from Weirton Steel. I’ve also got and old Camaro, and it would be sweet to see it in this movie.
They said if they used your car, they’d cast you as the driver!
I went to the casting call in Weirton under the impression it was about a steel town in the late 70s, but it had struck me as odd that they were also scouting for cars that were pre-1990s for a 1979 setting AND asking if any extras had athletic, military or martial arts experience! I think there’s another casting call for this today farther down south in Wheeling, WV, so it looks like they’ll be needing more than the 100s that showed up for the two casting calls they had in Weirton!
Maybe it’ll be more of a prequel?
I live across the street from where they are filming so I will let you know!
I live in Weirton and walked downtown today. They have changed the fronts of the buildings to look very 70’s. There’s a clothing store with mannequins dressed in 70’s clothes, a pharmacy with old products in the window, jewelry store, furniture store, car lot, etc. I have friends that live on Marland Heights (a neighborhood near downtown) who received letters stating that filming will take place Sept 20-23.
Steven Spielberg Attached To Weirton Movie Shoot – News Story – WTOV Steubenville
http://www.wtov9.com
WEIRTON, W.Va. — Details about the movie being shot in Weirton have been kept pretty quiet, but NEWS9 caught movie crews scoping out shooting locations Wednesday, and found out a lot more about where things will happen. Thursday, September 2, 2010.
i grew up in weirton, wva and live just 10 miles north now but drive through weirton daily to go to work. crew have indeed starting painting buildings ect to get ready for filming. i have a few pictures but will definetly get more. not sure how to post them here though. but hollywood has definetly invaded our little steel town. alot of speculation on actors starring in movie but im not really sure who they are. no filming yet started on main street, looks like they are still preparing buildings. excited to see how it turns out.. our town of weirton has also been he the setting of two other films… one was Deer Hunter, and back in the 80’s there was Reckless. check them out if you want to get a litle preview of town.
Hey Faith,
If you could upload some of your spy pics to somthing akin to image shack etc,,, and upload a direct link to your photo copy the address once you are on the picture .. or upload them and list them under Faith Heath. We will be able to check out your goodies =)
p.s there is also a movie called “runaway” starring denzel washington that started filming last fall in the town next to weirton. follansbee,wv is only 4 miles from weirton.
the movie was not called “runaway” its called “unstoppable”. not that im being mean but sorry to correct u. its also about a train. u can watch the trailer to it, it looks like its gonna be a good one. ive lived in weirton my life and today after reading some of the things on here i decided to go check it out for myself. they have definitely done alot to downtown. it was very cool to walk past the windows n see what all they have done. one thing tht i really thought was funny was tht a strip club they are making it a coffee shop and across the street at a bar they r making a toy store. i also drove up on marland heights and they changing part of a building into a post office and on the sign it says lillian,oh. across the street a church is being made a school and its called lillian middle school. they are going to start filming this week. if u also google stars in movie super 8 it does tell u 2 stars tht r in the movie…
the name of the movie is called “unstoppable” not “runaway” which wasn’t actually fimed in follansbee. they filmed on the market st bridge. between weriton and follansbee. the filming mostly took part in ohio…bellaire, martins ferry, and rayland…there maybe more towns but thats all i know off the top of my head.
u guys r all so dum… its called wickem and its about a train crash in this town… my town.. weirton. the train is supposed to be going to a military base in ohio sent from are 51. but then it crashes in our town and it turns out to be aliens…… i work on the set 🙂
I hope you realize that the last few posts have not been about Super 8, but rather a movie called Unstoppable with Denzel Washington and Chris Pine. It also happens to be about a train crash and was also filmed near Weirton…
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0477080/
So, … Does anyone have a picture of what the UFO’s looked like in the ufo movies around the follansbee/ohio/weirton area?
I’m curious because I seen something pretty damn amazing-looking and I’d like to confirm that it wasn’t real …. If it was something for one of the movies, then it was taken down freakishly fast though … I went in the house to tell a family member about it who btw didn’t seem to care, and went back out to find that it was gone. Poof!, gone just that quick.
How long does it take for them to take down a fairly large aircraft set?
If it was something real then I’m guessing some sort of futuristic styled government spyplane, but why did it fly so low then?
Needless to say, I’m really looking forward to whichever film is about UFO’s so that I can see the footage and tell if it’s even close to what I saw. It was one of the most amazing things that I’ve ever seen and if it’s part of the movie then I really got to hand it to the director and designers who made it cause they did a fantastic job with it.
The thing was big btw, I could tell because of the house that I used as a reference. Did they use something big for the movie or was it just some sort of little radio-controlled blimp sorta thing? And how’d they get something so large up into the air like that? … maybe they used a real large sized blimp and decorated it to look like a UFO? .. I don’t know if a real blimp could have disappeared so quick though …. yea, I’m confused by what I saw. I must know what is in that movie!
I wish I had gotten it on film…. it was so close … and it looked like something in between star wars and star trek … sorta futuristic styled yet not too much so.
I guess I just have to wait until the movie comes out to find out for sure just exactly what it was that I seen.
Good day!
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